Tag Archives: Innovation

Excellent survey of global CEOs by PwC. Not only does the survey focus on emerging markets, but it contains a significant section on the importance that CEOs attribute to innovation as a key driver of their growth strategy.

The 1,201 chief executives in 69 countries polled were nearly as confident in their outlook for revenue growth over the coming 12 months as in the boom years before the global financial crisis

Innovation is very high on the agenda for CEOs globally. 78% expect that their development efforts to generate significant new revenue opportunities over the next three years. The report shows that CEOs are “putting the customer first”, reinforcing the view that the best ideas come from customers, partners and suppliers. Further, CEOs are really trying to co-create products and services with their customers.

“Why are some organizations consistently good at innovating and adapting while others seem to be blindsided by change? Is it because of their disciplined innovation process or the knowledge and skills of their people? Or is it their determination to build a culture where challenging assumptions is not only encouraged, but expected? The IBM Creative Leadership Study found that leaders who embrace the dynamic tension between creative disruption and operational efficiency can create new models of extraordinary value.”

To gather the data for the IBM Creative Leadership Study, IBM conducted open-ended interviews with 40 leaders from around the world. Five of the participants are acknowledged experts in the area of creativity and innovation, five are senior HR officers from companies of various sizes, and the remaining 30 are creative leaders as defined by their peers.

Individuals in this last group represented a range of business and creative disciplines and were selected without regard to their formal leadership role in the organization. The interviews sought to answer three basic questions:

It’s not that long ago that a colleague told me that innovation would come out of China two generations hence. I did not believe him after seeing a little of what China was doing first hand.

Interesting to read this article today in the Start Advertiser:

As a result, China is expected to overtake Japan soon as the world’s second-largest R&D investor, although it still remains far behind the U.S. China’s domestic doctorate awards in science and engineering have also increased more than tenfold since the early 1990s, and its share of the global pool of researchers has grown from less than 14 percent in 2002 to more than 20 percent today.

Only a few years ago, China’s approach to innovation hardly played a role in international economic diplomacy. Today, it is a hot topic in U.S.-China economic relations, adding further to contentious disputes about exchange rates, trade and foreign direct investment.

The article continues:

Rather than fearing China, we need to focus our research and policy debates constructively on how this relationship can be improved.

Many of you will know that Procter & Gamble is one of my favourite companies when discussing innovation acceleration. The latest Harvard Business Review (June 2011) contains an extremely important article on the impact that innovation has had on P&G recently. We all know of the Connect and Develop program that was kicked off some years ago, but where is P&G now, and where are their innovation efforts? To be honest, I was unbelievably excited when I read this article, and I think you will be as well.

Here are some of the facts reported by HBR that really impressed me:

From 2004 to now, P&G looked to carry out the following:

a) Teach senior management and project members the mind-sets and behaviours that foster disruptive growth

b) Form a group of new-growth-business guides to help teams working on disruptive projects

e) Run demonstration projects to showcase the emerging factory’s work.

The challenge that they found in 2008 was that they were burdened by a number of smaller projects that were not necessarily disruptive. This scenario is very common – the organisation establishes an Innovation program and soon people ask – “So where are the Big Ideas?”. So Bob McDonald (then the COO) and Bruce Brown (then CTO and coauthor of the article in HBR) drove three critical improvements:

a) Increase emphasis on an intermediate category, transformational-sustaining innovations, which would deliver major new benefits in existing product categories

b) Strengthen organisational support for the formation of transformational sustaining and disruptive businesses. P&G created several new business-creation groups whose resources and management are kept separate from the core business – dedicated teams with a separate General Manager. What is really interesting is that there is one group, FutureWorks, solely dedicated to enabling different business models. This to me is tremendous and a lesson for other companies – while “tiger teams” might be formed to boost sales and win deals, it is rare that they are formed specifically for new business models.

c) Revamp its strategy development and review process. Innovation and strategy assessments had historically been handled separately. Now the CEO, CTO, and CFO explicitly link company, business, and innovation strategies. What a great lesson!

There are other significant lessons learned from the above cited in the article. And many more initiatives that you should read for yourself that are truly remarkable. Here, though, are some of the business impact metrics cited:

In 2000 only 15% of its innovation efforts met profit and revenue targets. Today the figure is 50%. The past fiscal year was one of the most productive innovation years in the companyʼs history, and the companyʼs three- and five-year innovation portfolios are sufficient to deliver against their growth objectives. Projections suggest that the typical initiative in 2014 and 2015 will have nearly twice the revenue of todayʼs initiatives. Thatʼs a sixfold increase in output without any significant increase in inputs.

In 2009 P&G introduced the wrinkle-reducing cream Olay Pro-X. Launching a $40-a-bottle product in the depths of a recession might seem a questionable strategy. But P&G went ahead because it considered the product a transformational sustaining innovation. The cream and related products generated first-year sales of $50 million in U.S. food retailers and drugstores alone.

In 2010 P&G refreshed its C+D goals. It aims to become the partner of choice for innovation collaboration, and to triple C+Dʼs contribution to P&Gʼs innovation development (which would mean deriving $3 billion of the companyʼs annual sales growth from outside innovators). It has expanded the program to forge additional connections with government labs, universities, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, consortia, and venture capital firms.

The HBR article can be found here. I seriously urge you to read it, digest it, look at what your organisation is NOT doing, and gather senior leaders of your organisation together in a war room to form an action plan to close the gap. NOW!.

Interesting article by McKinsey on how the US is slipping further and further behind in innovation. McKinsey conducted a series of interviews with CEOs of advanced industrial companies, and as they say there is “real cause for alarm. Seems the issues are:

Cutting-edge technology: the United States is competing against or even catching up with foreign companies and engineersDemand: more than 50 per cent of the global middle class lives outside of North AmericaTalent: Significant scientific talent is building outside of the United StateEntrepreneurship: There is an increase of risk aversion towards new ventures in the United States, with large US corporations being most affected

McKinsey goes on to provide a set of remedies:

1. Clear the way for the cutting edge industrial technologies of the future
2. Rebuild infrastructure
3. Attract and retain talent
4. Reenergise the entrepreneurial spirit in the large US companies

﻿The time people spend reading on a digital screen is now almost equal to the time spent reading printed paper text, according to a recent survey by Gartner, Inc. The huge majority of tablet and iPad users say they find screen reading either easier than reading printed text (52 percent) or about the same (42 percent). However, 47 percent of laptop users find screen reading harder than reading printed text, and 33 percent reported it was about the same.

In the fourth quarter of 2010, Gartner surveyed 1,569 consumers in six countries – the US, UK, China, Japan, Italy and India – about their subjective experiences of reading on screen versus reading printed paper text. The survey included a mixture of online, face-to-face and computer aided telephony interviews.

“There are concerns that digital media will cannibalize print media, based on the general decline in newspaper sales and take-up of online news services in many parts of the world, but the evidence from our research is that print and online are not generally regarded as direct substitutes by consumers,” said Nick Ingelbrecht, research director at Gartner. “Something more complicated than a straightforward substitution of print to digital media is taking place.”

“Trying to sell the same basic content to the same consumer in different formats risks alienating the consumer, who will balk at paying twice for the same thing,” said Ingelbrecht. “The survey results confirm that multichannel content distribution is essential for reaching consumers who are consuming near equal amounts of print and digital text. Content, publishing, and media organizations should market the synergies of multichannel products to consumers, stressing the benefits of having both print and online access, rather than selling competing stand-alone products.”

According to the Gartner survey, across the demographics, screen reading is now virtually on a par with print consumption. Survey data showed that younger age groups are happier to read on screen than older respondents, with the 40 to 54 years cohort least satisfied with their screen reading experience. In terms of gender, men typically reported screen reading easier than women, but both sexes said screen reading was generally the same or harder than reading printed text.

Gartner analysts said the shift from paper to screen-based consumption is not a straight substitution of one medium for another. There is no single paradigm for screen reading, because reading a short piece of text on a mobile phone screen is a different proposition from the reading experience with an e-reader.

The survey research indicated that around 40 percent of respondents had no experience of using e-readers, such the Amazon Kindle, Amazon Kindle DX and Barnes & Noble Nook, and this was even higher in India (75 percent), the U.K. (56 percent) and the U.S. (57 percent). Urban Chinese respondents had the highest familiarity with e-readers and also had the highest number reporting that e-readers were easier to read. This reflects the relatively high income and education level of the sample in China.

Knowledge@Wharton, the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, along with Wipro Technologies, has identified 15 confirmed finalists for the second global Wipro-Knowledge@Wharton Innovation Tournament. The finalists have proposed bold new ideas and implemented solutions, ranging from using hair to clean up oil spills to using software to track students’ progress. Four subcategories will serve as the final themes: new ideas in the area of sustainability; implemented solutions related to sustainability; new ideas in the area of customer-centric innovation; and implemented customer-centric solutions.

Karl Ulrich, professor and Vice Dean of Innovation at the Wharton School, said, “An innovation tournament begins with a large set of opportunities. The ideas and solutions the finalists are proposing could have, or already have had a major impact on business and society as a whole” he added. Wharton professor Christian Terwiesch agreed, saying, “Sustainability and customer-centric innovation are two of the most important topics of concern today. We’re looking forward to the final presentations and evaluating their potential contribution.” Terwiesch and Ulrich co-authored the book Innovation Tournaments: Creating and Selecting Exceptional Opportunities.

“We are pleased with the range of entries that the tournament received. This year, we had over 160 submissions stretching from all corners of the globe, from America to Tanzania. Forty semifinalists were selected, and now we have drilled down to the most promising submissions,” said Mukul Pandya, Executive Director of Knowledge@Wharton.

Judges from Wipro and Wharton selected finalists based on the novelty, feasibility, track record for established solutions, and overall potential. “Judging the semifinalists was challenging due to the vast number of high-quality entries. We are excited for the final presentations, and believe that society will benefit from the ideas and solutions generated from this year’s Innovation Tournament,” Pandya added.

On Wednesday, April 27th 2011, during a live event at the Wharton School in Philadelphia, USA finalists will conduct presentations before a panel of judges. The event will be streamed live on Wipro TV beginning at 8 a.m. EDT. Five cash prizes will be awarded — $20,000 for the grand prize, and $5,000 for each of four innovation subcategories.